Dev Diary #1: Initial Thoughts and Baby Steps

Timid though they may be

So it turns out developing a physical game from the ground up is hard. Much harder than anticipated. Because I'm not content with simply altering a preexisting game's mechanics slightly and calling it something new, there's an innumerable amount of questions needing to be addressed before even getting into the game's most basic mechanics. On top of that, because I come from a background of predominantly video games, my vocabulary for physical, instanced games is much weaker than the more devout board and card game enthusiasts, and I seem to have difficulty changing my mindset from the mechanics of video games to those of physical ones.

However, despite these logistical setbacks, I think I'm on the right track. It's taken some consideration, but at this point, there is at least one thing I know for certain I will not do with this game: I will not require players to use non-standard assets. There will be no cards for players to print off, no special playing pieces, and no unique game boards. Nothing that can't be found either at home already or for a cheap price in stores or online will be required. That means the tools at my disposal will be strictly limited to cards, dice, paper, pens, etc. I do this solely out of practicality both for myself as the developer and for players as well. I could try to make it fairly simple for players, sure, designing all of the game's pieces to be something like papercraft figures for easy assembly, but that would take far too much time from my developing the game and players playing the game to expect either one of us to put up with, especially on an unproven project such as this. No, I'm quite content just co-opting preexisting materials for this, my first game.

I'm also weary of creating a tabletop-type experience, something that operates more like a framework than a fully-realized game. Tabletop RPGs can be endlessly intricate, requiring mental compendiums to even become a competent player, and there is a real sophistication in that intricacy that I quite admire, actually. But while such complexity can be inviting, it also leaves open more opportunities for broken game mechanics and exploitation. The time and effort needed to reconfigure large chunks of my game's rules to close these loopholes would simply be too great for me to justify making such a complex game in the first place. Beyond that, the rules of a tabletop game are really only half of the experience. I would need to create whole campaigns, complete with quests, sidequests, NPCs, dialogue, etc. for those who don't wish to create their own, and to demonstrate to those who do how to use the game's rules properly. Needless to say, for my first go-around, I'd prefer this being a more bite-sized affair.

Twenty compendiums too many

And finally, to wrap up what I won't be doing with this first game, I don't wish to create something that is wholly a logical or mechanical experience. I don't want to create a game that solely tests one's mental acuity like Sudoku, nor one that is purely mechanics and chance like Go Fish. Logic and puzzle games can, like RPGs, have a beautiful intricacy to their mechanics, but there are already so many in existence that my adding to the pool would cause not even a ripple, and that's assuming whatever I create is actually decent. Mechanical games can be fine ways to pass time, but I don't think I would personally be content with creating such a thoughtless experience. I would like to at least make an attempt at creating a mentally and possibly aesthetically stimulating game, even if the game itself doesn't turn out great.

So where does that leave us? Despite having taken a good number of game types off the table already, the sheer number of gameplay opportunities left is staggering, even more so when allowing for games with combined assets, games with both cards and dice, cards and paper, dice and paper, etc. However, I'm not sure if I'm comfortable at this point with closing off any more doors outright, not without fleshing out more of what type of experience I'm looking to create with this game first. Perhaps actually making some affirmations might help whittle down my options even further than simply writing more things off. If I can better determine what I would like to see in this game as a whole, perhaps deciding on the particulars of gameplay will become easier.

In developing this game, the one idea I'm unquestionably married to is the making of a game whose mechanics are intriguing enough to create memorable experiences for its players. In video games, this is a concept known as emergent gameplay, where mechanics and gameplay alone create memorable and/or narratively significant experiences outside of the game's prescribed narrative, should one exist. Emergent gameplay, however, is far less prevalent in video games than in physical games. Video games have the luxury of moving images and sound, making developer-prescribed plot much more engaging for the player to experience than those of physical games which lack such niceties. Very few physical games offer their players plots to follow. Instead, they offer players a setting in which they can contextualize their actions, as well as a victory condition relevant to the setting for which they are to strive. Cluedo is a prime example of this, presenting players the setting of a manor whose owner has just been murdered and the victory condition of successfully deducing the details of the murder which randomize with every session. The setting and the victory condition in Cluedo never change, but the events and actions players take in accordance with them do, and those actions, I think, are what facilitate the intrigue of the game. It's not about reaching the end, but rather how one gets there.

Though why play the game when you can see the movie?

Cluedo can also be used to demonstrate the sheer power of context. There are many physical games that don't utilize context at all. Most card games which use the French deck, the standard fifty-two-card deck we've come to know and love, don't provide context to the actions they require players to perform. Bridge, for instance, doesn't ask its players to solve a murder mystery or become a property monopolist as part of its victory condition. It's a game that relies purely on its mechanics and nothing more to facilitate interest. However, in theory, so too could either Cluedo or Monopoly. One could white out every square on a Cluedo board to leave nothing but its grid pattern, refer to all the game pieces purely by their colors and not by their developer-prescribed names, and change all the cards to numbers, letters, and colors, thereby stripping the game of Cluedo down to its most basic mechanics. Playing this stripped-down version would still mean that one is playing Cluedo, but the game is no longer about a murder mystery. In fact, it's no longer about anything. It's simply a game where players deduce which three cards, one from each of the three categories, is not in play. That's the core mechanic of Cluedo lying beneath the veneer of its murder mystery setting. But in my describing the bare-bones version of the game, did it seem nearly as engaging? Is determining that 5, B, and white are not in play nearly as enticing a prospect as determining that Mrs. Peacock killed Dr. Black in the study with a wrench? I didn't think so.

Given the power of context thence demonstrated, does this mean my game will automatically have a setting? Not necessarily, though that is the direction I am leaning towards at the moment. In thinking of what physical games I enjoy playing, most provide some sort of setting to the actions they require of their players, and those that don't typically involve something else to facilitate intrigue beyond their mechanics alone, namely gambling. Since I won't be developing a poker variant, a logic game, a puzzle game, or a tabletop role-playing game, I think that, taking my own preferences into account, it's safe to assume that my game will have a setting and contextualized actions. How I go about contextualizing players' actions using preexistent game assets will be a hurdle, to be sure, but perhaps one best saved for later. Right now, I'm content with having taken at least a baby step in what I feel will be a good direction.